


welcome to the fog

by chidorinnn



Category: Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are going to play a game.</p>
<p>Are you a boy? Are you a girl? Are you both? Are you neither? It doesn’t matter. You are an extension of my will – nothing more, and nothing less. You are a fool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	welcome to the fog

You are going to play a game.

Are you a boy? Are you a girl? Are you both? Are you neither? It doesn’t matter. You are an extension of my will – nothing more, and nothing less. You are a fool.

Your given name is irrelevant, but your surname is Shirasagi. It is Shirasagi because there was one who came before you, perhaps in a different world – another extension of my will, who bore the same surname. From this day onward, you will be living in a small, rural village called Inaba. You’ve always been weak, sickly, and your parents in the city have sent you here because they believe that the country air will improve your health. You will be living with your grandparents, who are currently and indefinitely away on a trip. Do such people exist? You and the general populace believe that they do, and that is all that matters.

You will transfer to Yasogami High as a second-year student. There will be a loud, rude teacher who doesn’t like you or anyone else in the class. There will be a girl named Chie who will invite you to sit next to her. She is not this friendly to everyone – after school, there will be a boy named Yosuke that she will kick simply because he fell off his bike onto a DVD that she’d lent him. She and another girl Yukiko, the heiress to the most successful inn on this side of Japan, will walk home with you. They will become two of your closest comrades on this journey.

On your way home, you will come across a crime scene. A local housewife will comment on the dead body that was presumably found high up on a telephone pole. A detective will shove past you and vomit. Another detective will insist that you leave.

Life will continue as if nothing had happened, but people will not stop talking about Mayumi Yamano, the woman who died. The name does not sound at all familiar to you, but Chie and Yosuke seem to know who she is, and that she was having an affair with the local councilman.

You will learn other tidbits of seemingly useless trivia – that the local department store which Yosuke’s father manages is at odds with the privately owned shops that populate the local shopping district, that the girl who works at Junes that Yosuke fancies belongs to a family that owns one of those stores in the shopping district.

Then Chie will tell you about the Midnight Channel, a phenomenon that occurs at midnight when a TV that is turned off will spontaneously restart and show you your soulmate. You already know of this phenomenon – it will come as no surprise when that same girl that Yosuke fancies, Saki Konishi, appears on the screen later that night. You will almost fall into the TV itself, and you will not be surprised. After all, why should you be surprised by something that just  _is_?

The next day, you will venture into a world very unlike the one you know – a world inside the TV that by all means should not exist. There will be fog everywhere, so much fog that you can barely see. You will not be alone – you will have accidentally pulled Yosuke and Chie into the TV with you as you demonstrated to them what you can do.

(You need not worry. They will not blame you for this.)

You will come across a room with  a scarf hanging from the ceiling like a noose. Yosuke and Chie will comment that they feel sick. Perhaps your body will fail you as it has your entire life, making you ill as well. Or perhaps you will be entirely unaffected, because this place, this world inside the TV, is something that belongs to you in a way that it doesn’t belong to anyone else.

Either way, you will arrive at school the following morning to find that Saki Konishi, the girl that Yosuke fancies, the girl you saw on the Midnight Channel, has died. You will take Yosuke back into the world inside the TV, where he will awaken to the same ability that I have gifted the ones who came to the village from outside, after a struggle against himself. You will not awaken to the same ability, because you are an extension of my will and I have no need for a Persona. Still, I will gift you with the tools necessary to solve this mystery – Raijin and Shikome, who have aided me in times past.

There will be more like Saki Konishi – an heiress, a boy in a gang, an idol, a detective, an innocent child – only they will survive when she didn’t. Perhaps you will solve this mystery. Perhaps you will let the world be consumed by the fog.

But I will always be here, waiting, and one day, you will return to me and we will become one once more, because you are merely an extension of my will – nothing more, and nothing less.

Thou art I, and I am thou.

Seek the truth in the fog.


End file.
